A study has focused on the evolutionary history of the mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis, and more specifically on the Beijing lineage associated with the spread of multidrug resistant forms of the disease ...

Amidst a national shortage of radiographers in the UK and an increasing requirement for researchers to work with large databases of radiograph images, the software which is being funded by the Engineering ...

Female populations have been larger than male populations throughout human history, according to research published today in the open access journal Investigative Genetics. The research used a new techni ...

In the most comprehensive genetic study of the Mexican population to date, researchers from UC San Francisco and Stanford University, along with Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), ...

(Medical Xpress)—The CDC has issued a report detailing its findings in attempting to trace the increasing difficulty in treating gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that can cause severe discomfort, ...

(Medical Xpress)—A team of US researchers from several universities has used single nucleotide variants (SNVs) to estimate human population growth. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Ac ...

The fall ritual of getting an annual influenza shot could join castor oil on the list of bygone remedies within a decade, some scientists say. And as that tradition fades away, so too will our fears of ...

An article to be published in the American Journal of Public Health recommends changing the federal regulations that govern oversight of human subjects research ("the Common Rule") to address continued underrepresentation of min ...

(Medical Xpress)—As human population grows, disease-causing genetic mutations per individual increase, but each mutation is less harmful, when compared with a population that is not growing, says a Cornell study to be published ...

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered an important process by which special immune cells in the skin help heal wounds. They found that these skin-resident immune cells function as "first responders" ...

World population

The term world population commonly refers to the total number of living humans on Earth at a given time. As of 29 July 2009, the Earth's population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 6.774 billion. The world population has been growing continuously since the end of the Black Death around 1400. There were also short term falls at other times due to plague, for example in the mid 17th century (see graph). The fastest rates of world population growth (above 1.8%) were seen briefly during the 1950s then for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s (see graph). According to population projections, world population will continue to grow until around 2050. The 2008 rate of growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.2% per year, which was reached in 1963. World births have levelled off at about 134-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant. However, deaths are only around 57 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the world's population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.